Our latest roundup of worker wins begins with a victory 10 years in the making and includes numerous examples of working people organizing, bargaining and mobilizing for a better life.
By recognizing social and economic justice as one and the same, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood the immense power working people have when they come together.
Organized labor managed an increasingly rare feat on Monday — a political victory — when its allies turned back a Senate measure aimed at rolling back labor rights on tribal lands.
The legislation, called the Tribal Labor Sovereignty Act, would have exempted enterprises owned and operated by Native American tribes from federal labor standards, even for employees who were not tribal citizens.
The notion of bringing home 80 cents for every dollar pocketed by a man on a national basis is unsettling enough. But it's even more startling when those lost wages are added up.
Overall, it amounts to $10,000 in lost wages a year, says Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families. That chunk of cash could pay for 14 more months of child care, 74 more weeks of groceries and an additional 10 months of rent for the average woman.
As America prepares to observe the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination today, there is one name you may not hear: Bayard Rustin. A close confidante and mentor of King, Rustin was a key leader of the civil rights movement and chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He proved to be a transformative figure in the fight for racial justice, even introducing King to the Gandhian principles of nonviolence that would come to define the struggle. He also happened to be gay.
Richard Trumka & Rick Bloomingdale
on Tuesday, April 3 - 4:59pm
Rep.-elect Conor Lamb made national waves with his improbable win in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District. He faced down $10 million in outside money funneled to his opponent by corporate and right-wing interests. He fought through a barrage of incessant, hyperpartisan attacks blanketing the airwaves. He was abandoned by his own party’s national infrastructure in a district that hadn’t elected a Democrat in nearly 15 years. And he still came out on top.
Unions help build a better life for working people but the wealthy are trying to further rig the economic system in their favor. Show your support for unions.
